‘How did you find him?’
‘Pai. She called me one day. I didn’t know her and she was very secretive. “Come to Bangkok” is all she said, but I knew why. I was on the next plane out.’
‘The spike’ll kill him, you know,’ Hatcher whispered.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’ve always known I’ll outlive him. Every time he takes a shot I think it’ll be his last. He comes to me and he puts his arms around me and I can feel all the futility and defeat in his body. That’s when I just pray I’ll have him one more day, before the needle takes him away. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like. The loneliness of not having him anymore.’
‘Fong will kill Murph, Hatcher, like he had to kill Wol Pot. That’s why we have to destroy Tollie Fong first.’
‘I’m out of it. Do what you want. I’ve done my job and I’m going home,’ he said.
Hatcher thought about the trips Pai had made down- river to score for Taisung and for Johnny; about the deals she had made for them; about the logistics of getting Jaimie, who was dying of cancer, back into South Vietnam so he could get home.
‘Leave Tollie Fong alone,’ Hatcher whispered. ‘You prod him, he’ll be like an angry bull. Leave him alone and it will all pass. Believe me, I know this man well.’
‘How about Sloan?’
‘I have to see him once more — there’s something that needs to be finished between us.’
‘And what’ll you tell him about Murph Cody?’
Hatcher looked at the tall, sad-eyed man who had once been his brash boxing colleague, looked across the yard at Wonderboy, who was playing his guitar and singing softly for the Thai dancers, and at Pai, who had traded her youth, her nationality, her very soul, for the man she loved.
‘I’ll tell him the truth,’ said Hatcher. ‘I’ll tell him Murph Cody is dead.’
PLAYBACK
The sun was close to the horizon when he got back to the hotel. Hatcher was tired and dispirited, and at first did not notice the tape recorder sitting on the table beside the bed. He peeled off his dirty clothes, took a shower, came out with a towel wrapped around his waist and lay on the bed, thinking about Murph Cody and the regulars, a disparate group bonded together by love and the need to protect one another. And suddenly he missed the island and Ginia and his friends there, people who asked nothing of one another but trust and friendship. Not unlike the Longhorn regulars. And he admitted to himself that Ginia had brought more happiness and feeling into his life than anything since his days at Annapolis.
He shifted his thoughts back to the regulars. They were going to hit Tollie Fong, he was sure of it, and they would risk everything to do it. And then thinking of Fong, he thought about the assassination of Campon and the bombing in Paris and the death of the Hyena. The police were speculating that he was killed by one of his own people, but Hatcher was familiar with the Hyena — he always worked alone. Pieces began to fall in place in his head.
Then he noticed the small hand-size tape machine. He stared at it, wondering where it had come from, before he reached out and picked it u.
Lying on his back, he flipped on the play switch. The voice froze him: ‘Hatcher, do I have to tell you what this is, or do you recognize my voice? Perhaps it will help if I stir your memory. Does Singapore mean anything? It should, Hatcher, that is where you murdered my father. Or the rivers, where you killed my father’s most loyal soldiers. Or the house of the American Jew, Cohen, who calls himself Chinese, where you murdered still more of my men. Do I need to tell you my name? No, I think not.
‘I am certain that you know I have made a promise to my san wong to put aside the ch’u-tiao I have sworn against you. And I will honor that oath even though you have dishonored my family and spilled our blood.
‘And while my promise also includes Cohen, it does not include all your friends, Hatcher.
‘Listen for a moment, here is another voice for you to recognize.’
There was silence on the tape for thirty or forty seconds, a hollow sound. Then Hatcher heard someone enter a room farther away, in another part of the house or apartment or whatever it was. A woman’s voice was humming as a door opened.
Then she screamed.
It was a scream of surprise and fright, followed almost immediately by the sound of someone being hit
— a groan? It was difficult to make out. A moment later there was the sound of heavy breathing, of footsteps on stairs, then Fong’s voice again: ‘It will be a few moments more, Hatcher. I had to use a little force to subdue your friend.’ The machine went dead for a moment, then the hollow sound again followed by a scream and a woman’s voice, angry and full of hate:
‘You bastard, you bloody bastard, take your hands off me...’
Daphne.
He sat straight up on the bed. His heartbeat accelerated. He could not believe what he was hearing, did not want to hear it. He snapped it off and held it in a trembling hand. He knew before the tape spun any further that Daphne was dead. He knew it because Fong would not have left the tape for him to hear if she was still alive. He could not imagine what horror the tape would spew out and yet he hesitated to turn it back on.
The fan whirred overhead in a syncopated rhythm. Outside, the sun slid below the spears and domes of the city’s temples. Darkness crept silently into the room and filled its corners and shadows, and still Hatcher sat there with the dreaded tape recorder in his hand. Finally he turned the switch back on and listened to her screams of anger and outrage, listened to the struggle, to things falling and breaking, and finally a sharp crack and a grunt and a sigh.
And Fong’s voice, slightly out of breath. ‘She is a tigress, Hatcher. Her nails are like scissors. I had to put her away again, but only for a few minutes. She will come around.’
There was a soft, obscene chuckle. ‘I think. I broke her jaw, Hatcher.’
There was a rustling sound, sounds of activity in the room and Fong’s voice again, farther away from the recorder this time. ‘I am tying her to her bed, Hatcher. Her hands to the head . . . there. Now her feet. She is tied down on the bed like a star, stretched out for me, Hatcher.’
Daphne groaned. Her voice, pitifully weak and confused at first, then growing stronger, the outrage flowing back into it. Then came the sounds of clothing being torn, viciously, recklessly, and accompanied by Fong’s toneless chortling.
‘Cut me loose, you pig. You worthless, stinking pig!’ Then she screamed again, this time a scream of great pain, followed by a sobbing deep in her throat.
‘This is for Hatcher,’ Fong’s voice hissed. ‘You understand, bitch.’
Her scream tore through the small speaker, distorting it. ‘Hatch . .
‘I’m going to have to gag her, Hatcher. You’ll have to trust me from now on. I’ll tell you everything that’s happening. I promise you, I won’t leave out a single detail . .